Wild Hearts
by Libertarian
Summary: SSOC An American with unbelievable powers is discovered by the Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore realizes he must get to the person (who is unaware that she even has powers) before Voldemort does. Severus travels to America, begins teaching at her colleg
1. Default Chapter

Prologue  
~ The Mission ~  
  
"How went your holidays, Severus?" Dumbledore questioned airily as he summoned tea for two. The younger man snorted and crossed one black-clad leg lazily over the other.  
  
"Marvelously, Albus. I spent most of the time chatting up buxom volleyball players on the nude beaches in the south of France, but I did manage to work on my tan when I wasn't having wild animal sex with women half my age." Here he gestured upwards to his parchment pale face. "As you can see by the healthy glow that now suffuses my features." With an irritable sigh, the Potions master accepted the proffered tea and took a sip.  
  
"Sounds rather like my summer," Dumbledore replied mildly as he sank into his armchair. Snape choked on his tea and spluttered in surprise, and the headmaster smiled slightly.  
  
"And what did Minerva think of that? Or was she one of the players?" Snape queried smoothly, now recovered from his brief shock. The Headmaster took his turn drowning himself in tea, and Snape smiled enigmatically back as Dumbledore regained his composure. Touché, he thought.  
  
"We'll call that one a draw," Dumbledore remarked, and Fawkes, a few feet away on his perch, let out a single note in obvious agreement.  
  
"I didn't ask for your opinion," the younger wizard snapped at the bird. The phoenix feigned offense and presented his tailfeathers to the present company.  
  
"Is this a social visit, Albus, or was there an actual purpose behind your invitation?" the Potions master demanded as he turned back to Dumbledore.  
  
"Er. As much as I crave your company, Severus, this is not a mere companionable tea. I have a great favor I must ask of you." Snape waited expectantly, but the Headmaster took a slow, measured sip of tea and said nothing. He studied the younger wizard over his glasses, and for the first time since his decision actually questioned the wisdom of his choice.  
  
"Is this your idea of entertainment, you obnoxious old fool? Do you plan to keep me in suspense for the remainder of our little chat? If so, I will take my leave and, on my way out, hurl my damn tea at that feathery git over there who pretends to understand what we're saying," Snape fumed. Fawkes gave him an inscrutable look over his shoulder, then began to groom himself elaborately.  
  
"Patience, you miserable bat," Dumbledore replied cheerfully; this actually seemed to improve Snape's mood by a hair.  
  
"We have received intelligence that there is a powerful new magical presence in America, in the Midwest. Although we at the Order ignored this information for a time, new details have come to light which suggest that this situation may require further scrutiny." Here the Headmaster paused, and peered once more at Snape over his glasses. The younger man stared back, betraying no irritation at the further delay, and Dumbledore smiled to himself. "We don't yet know whether this presence is a boy or a girl, man or woman. We do know this person's magical aura shows enormous power, but it is rough, untamed power. In fact, we suspect this person doesn't even realize he or she has magical powers at all."  
  
"A wilder?" Snape questioned, his cocked eyebrow betraying his sudden interest.  
  
"Yes," Dumbledore replied simply. Snape leaned back in his chair and slowly raised the delicate porcelain to his lips. This was certainly an unexpected development.  
  
"How certain are you?" he asked, no sarcasm in his velvety voice.  
  
"We are utterly sure; an enormously powerful wilder, quite possibly more powerful than Harry Potter is now, and with more potential than Tom Riddle ever showed, is entering his or her Freshman year at the University of Oklahoma."  
  
"Interesting." Snape replied absently. He blinked, and focused on the Headmaster.  
  
"Why don't you know who this person is? And how do you know that they are starting college?"  
  
"Remus Lupin was traveling undercover, Muggle-style, chasing a pair of possible Death Eaters. His flight, however, was delayed at Will Rogers World Airport for three hours, and he was wandering aimlessly around the concourse to pass the time when he felt powerful magic being channeled nearby. He had almost located the source when the magic stopped, and he couldn't identify who had been channeling. Remus had almost given up when he felt another similar burst, only this time from farther away. He raced out of the airport, grabbed a taxi, and began following whomever it was. The bursts were brief, and he almost lost them several times, but eventually he reached the OU campus in Norman, where the person channeled again during some enrollment seminar. Although Remus spent the next few days in Norman, the person never channelled again."  
  
"Are you certain he actually enrolled there?"  
  
"We sensed a few similar bursts yesterday, when the students began to move into the dorms for the fall semester."  
  
Snape carefully set down his cup and began to stroke his chin thoughtfully. It was amazingly rare for anyone with the talent to escape being noticed by the magical community until such a late age, even in America. In the course of his entire life, he had only known of one other wilder, and that boy had only been fourteen. This whole situation was. interesting.  
  
"More powerful than Potter, you say?" Snape questioned. Dumbledore nodded.  
  
"And he or she has the potential to be far more powerful than Voldemort?" Another nod. Snape rose and paced over to one of the windows in Dumbledore's study and peered out thoughtfully. "As engaging as I find this revelation, I do not see how it concerns me. Would you care to enlighten me, Albus?" Snape heard the older man sigh behind him.  
  
"Severus, I'm afraid I must request your resignation. Hogwarts no longer needs you."  
  
A/N The bit about wilders was borrowed from Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" series. If you have not read it, then I must strongly suggest you do so.  
  
R&R please- I try to show similar courtesy to those who review my stories and search for theirs to review in turn. 


	2. Relocation

Relocation  
  
But a few hours later, Snape found himself standing in his now empty chambers, looking for what would probably be the last time at what had been his home for fifteen years. Fifteen years, and all that he had accumulated in that time was now securely packed in a sleek leather suitcase resting at his side.  
  
"Will Professor be needing anything else?" one of the house elves asked cautiously.  
  
"No. nothing more. You may go," he replied flatly, his voice trailing off as his eyes rested on the door that had led to his private laboratory. His chambers were just rooms, places he passed through, slept in, ate in; he had never assigned them any real significance. But his laboratory. that had been his home, truly, for the past fifteen years. That's where he had felt alive, purposeful, and- and worthy. Worthy of the trust and affection he had always received from Dumbledore, and the respect he had finally received after he turned on Voldemort.  
  
Unable to fight the urge, Severus found himself drifting towards the ebony door, his hand lovingly caressing the handle, but not turning it; he knew he could not bear to see the empty walls that had once been lined with shelves and shelves of carefully organized ingredients, the empty floor that had once supported his workstations and cauldrons and burners, and the dark ceiling that he had occasionally charmed to mimic the nighttime sky. All empty now, magically cleaned, leaving no sign that he had ever been there, that he had ever lived there. He could not bear to see it, he could not bring his hand that now clutched the silver handle almost painfully to turn the lever and swing the door inwards. As strong as Severus thought he was, he found he was not strong enough for that. Instead, he leaned his forehead against the smooth black wood, and allowed his shoulders to shake with silent, dry sobs. No tears, though; not from Severus Lanzer Snape. Besides. what was there, really, to mourn? He was setting out on a new mission, possibly a better one, and he was not leaving behind a place that he had been happy in. In fact, he wasn't leaving behind anything at all.  
  
It wasn't until he had boarded a plane at Heathrow, embarking on the journey that would take him eventually to Norman, Oklahoma, that he realized he was mourning not the loss inherent to any relocation, but the fact that, in his case, there had been nothing to lose.  
  
One last connection, he thought grimly as he strode down one the O'Hare concourses. Only one more hideous flight, and I'll be there.  
  
Severus had found, much to his disgust, that the Muggle way of long- distance traveling left him quite. well, nauseous. He had almost vomited soon after take-off from Heathrow, and had had several near misses since. The former Potions master, soon to be chemistry professor, had belatedly realized that his clothing was also attracting untoward attention. Although he had not been foolish enough to wear wizarding robes, he had still worn his nineteenth century style suit, complete with black frock coat and a black ascot. This, apparently, was no longer popular attire among Muggles. Adults stared, adolescents snickered, and children actually pointed at him as he clumsily made his connections in the huge, unfamiliar airports. How ridiculously complicated the whole affair was turning out to be!  
  
"Final boarding call for flight 227 to Oklahoma City. Final call." With a muttered curse, Severus ran the rest of the way to the terminal, and reached the flight attendant just before she shut the doors to the walkway. She flashed him a stunning smile.  
  
"You're just in time," she teased as she stepped aside. He ignored her completely (blondes, especially fake ones, did not warrant his attention.) It was lucky for him that he did not drink the Coke that same stewardess later brought him.  
  
An Indian woman, he thought to himself. What does that mean I ought to be looking for? When I get off the plane at Will Rogers, would there be a teepee set-up on the concourse or something? And what kind of Indian name was Neera, anyway?  
  
No time for more deliberation- he was getting off the plane. He anxiously (though he never would have admitted it) scanned the crowd, but saw no ponies or blankets or anything remotely stereotypical. People ran into each others' arms, lovers swung their squealing beloved's around, grandparents hefted toddlers and kissed them on their pudgy cheeks.  
  
"Professor Snape?" a voice questioned in obvious disbelief. He turned quickly, his body language betraying the relief he would not allow to show in his face.  
  
"Oh," he said abruptly when he saw the woman who had addressed him. "Er." he added eloquently.  
  
"I'm Neera Agimudie," the middle-aged Indian woman informed him.  
  
"I'm. Professor Snape," he replied jerkily. She smiled, flashing brilliant white teeth.  
  
"You were expecting me to be a Native American, weren't you?"  
  
"Well."  
  
Neera laughed again. "I am from Calcutta, and I am sorry if you are disappointed." Snape almost blushed before he regained his composure. What the hell's the matter with you? He thought irritably. Is every muggle going to disconcert you so?  
  
"To the campus, then?" Snape hinted, his voice silky and genial once more.  
  
"You did not check any baggage?" she questioned as they began to head down the busy concourse. Severus noticed for the first time that Neera was over a head shorter than he was, and he found this strangely comforting. This sudden upheaval had left the normally composed wizard absolutely reeling, and the bloody muggle skyplanes, or whatever the hell they were called, had made his discomfiture and disorientation almost unbearable. And the damned connections inside those damned airports that seemed the size of Manchester, and the damn cheerful stewardesses, and the curious muggles, and then the confusing ethnicity of the woman supposed to meet him. this thought made him glance down at her, and he deduced from her expectant gaze that he was supposed to say something. Severus struggled to remember her question.  
  
"No, I only have this."  
  
Neera arched her eyebrow at him. "I've always heard Brits packed lightly, but this seems almost ridiculous. You do realize you're Faculty in Residence rooms won't be furnished?"  
  
The tall wizard shrugged carelessly. "I can buy furniture once I arrive." The woman shook her head again as they exited the airport and headed towards the enormous parking garage. Severus had to resist the urge to clap his hands over his ears to block out all the unnecessary noise; he was accustomed, as all witches and wizards were, to the quiet that comes with having no electricity, cars, planes, or machinery. The muggle world seemed so damn. loud.  
  
Severus felt a headache coming on. 


	3. Understanding

One last thing.  
  
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank you, Albus," Severus intoned reluctantly as he offered the older wizard a brandy.  
  
"For connecting your new fireplace to the Floo Network?" the Headmaster questioned as he settled onto a plump leather couch.  
  
"Yes. I had not realized how disconnected I had been feeling until you arrived. I will wring your neck, you old bat, if you tell anyone, but I was actually beginning to miss the English wizarding community. Now that I can appear there at will, it's no longer an issue for me," the younger man explained haltingly (unused to such personal conversation), before settling into a stiff-backed armchair near the fireplace.  
  
"Well, Severus, I'm glad you're in a good mood." Snape's eyes narrowed and flashed up to meet Dumbledore's.  
  
"What do you want?" he demanded icily.  
  
"Now, now, why can't I just be happy for you?"  
  
"You may be, but that comment implies that there's something you've been holding back. What is it?"  
  
Albus ran his long fingers through his mane of hair nervously. "We discovered the identity of the wilder." Snape's eyes widened slightly, and he angled his body forward subconsciously. "Her name is Kaira Andersen, and she's a philosophy major." The other man's eyebrow arched upwards mockingly.  
  
"How useful."  
  
"Yes, I think so," Dumbledore replied, no mockery in his tone. "Anyhow. . . she has already received college credit for Chemistry, so she will never be enrolled in your department."  
  
"How did she receive credit?" Severus demanded.  
  
"Advanced placement exams. Anyway, the Order has decided that your. . . efforts will be needed in a slightly different context." Dumbledore snatched his brandy off the table and drained it; his host noticed the gesture, and found his insides congealing into ice.  
  
"We're going to need you to teach in the Philosophy deparment."  
  
"WHAT?! Have you lost your MIND!!!" The black-clad wizard had leapt to his feet, his voice reverberating around the mostly empty living room.  
  
"You are qualified to teach entry level courses, at least, and that's the only place where we can be sure Miss Andersen will find you on her course schedule. I know this is rough, but-"  
  
"You have no idea!" Severus screamed, his arm arching gracefully back, snapping forward, and launching his crystal decanter smoothly into the wall. The shards arced away from the point of impact and skittered across the tile floor with a musical tinkle that seemed dreadfully out of place. "You bastard, you have no idea! You force me to teach idiots at that damn school for a decade and a half, force me to risk my life time and again for people I don't give a damn about, then you force me to uproot to a new country, to teach Muggles, and now you're telling me I'll be teaching fucking PHILOSOPHY??? What the hell. . . I'm the most philosophically, ethically, and metaphysically challenged man next to Voldemort himself. You have NO idea what you're doing."  
  
"I never forced you to do any of those things," the Headmaster replied quietly. "They were your choices."  
  
"I was coerced!"  
  
"By your conscience, but not by me. Not by any of us."  
  
"There was never a real choice," Severus said, biting out each word.  
  
"The fact that your options are unsavory by no means proves that you never had them. That illogical, Professor," Dumbledore chided sternly.  
  
"Damn you," Severus muttered quietly, defeated. Albus drew his wand and gestured towards the general area where the decanter had fallen. Immediately, the shards raced back together and flew back to the table. With another flourish, it filled the two glasses with newly summoned brandy seemingly of its own accord before settling back down onto the wooden surface.  
  
"Drink." Severus obeyed numbly, his movements mechanical and his narrowed eyes cold.  
  
"All the details have been attended to by the Order. Everyone will believe you are Professor Severus L. Snape, with a PhD from Cambridge in philosophy. We have even prepared your office in your new department. You will be teaching three classes this semester. . ."  
  
Dumbledore continued explaining various aspects of this new mission, his voice gradually regaining its usual cheerfulness. Severus listened with half a mind, but otherwise drifted through various, disconnected memories from his long-gone youth.  
  
"There is one last thing, Severus." Obsidian eyes flashed up to meet cerulean ones.  
  
"I have built you a laboratory where your guest bedroom was." Snape's heart leapt, but he continued to scowl.  
  
"That room was too small," he replied tersely. Dumbledore flashed him a toothy grin.  
  
"See? Things will work out well for you here; you're already thinking like a muggle," the Headmaster teased. Severus, unable to contain his boyish glee, raced from the sparse living room, down the hall, and into his second bedroom.  
  
Magically expanded to twice what his old laboratory had been, this space boasted a twenty foot ceiling with an entire wall of carefully categorized ingredients, another wall supporting shelf after shelf of books, and the wall straight ahead holding cabinets for his numerous cauldrons and other equipment. Work tables filled the center of the room, most with burners and stirring rods built in.  
  
Severus felt his knees weaken as he gazed at this new, infinitely better laboratory. He could make this a home. He could come to enjoy being in this country, as long as this work place was here. He could live here.  
  
With a shiver of awareness, Snape realized that Dumbledore had just cast some kind of spell. . . Startled, his eyes flew upwards to the ceiling, which now rumbled with a primordial thunderstorm of violent red and gray and black.  
  
"Thought this might come closest to matching your usual temperament," the Headmaster chuckled behind him. Snape lowered his head, in acceptance and in atonement- he did not deserve such understanding. He did not deserve so many second chances. But when his eyes began to prickle with unshed tears, he forced his emotions to subside, and hoped dearly that Dumbledore would leave quickly, before he lost control.  
  
When Severus turned, he found that Albus had already left.  
  
I do not deserve to be understood so well, he thought. 


	4. Endings and a Beginning

Paths  
  
When Paige Johnston met Michael Andersen, she knew she had found someone wonderful. She was twenty, with a beauty that came more from overflowing energy that from her face, and a new self-assurance derived from no longer being in the minority. Paige had finally started to glow.  
  
As a new transfer student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, she had been a little bewildered by the sprawling campus and the winding, tree- lined paths. One day, after she realized how late she was, she began running down an alley between two buildings (a shortcut she had noticed the day before), and, in the dim light, did not see the other person bolting towards her from the opposite direction.  
  
They collided.  
  
Apparently, Paige wasn't the only student who used the alley as a shortcut. Michael introduced himself pleasantly as he helped her gather her strewn books, and pulled her gently to her feet in a way that bespoke of an underlying kindness below the cool façade. He invited her for coffee, and she accepted the invitation, completely forgetting about the class she was supposed to be in.  
  
It was then, she thought later, that she had begun to fall in love with him.  
  
Theirs was a whirlwind courtship, complete with quiet sighs, moonlit walks, proffered bouquets, and candlelit dinners. Paige spent those few months in a hazy happiness she had never known before, the time slipping past her inconsequentially, leaving fuzzy memories that were more sensation than accurate record. She found herself smiling wherever she went, and was told by some of her teachers that she had even begun humming softly, atonally, as she took exams or finished homework.  
  
And then, on a perfectly normal morning in mid February, after a long night of love-making in her swanky little apartment, Michael took her to New York City, took her to the top of the Empire State building, and explained that things could not continue the way they had been. That he needed a change. That the relationship was stagnating. That he needed more. That she deserved more from him.  
  
And then he gave her a diamond ring, on bended knee, at the top of a building, on the summit of the world's most powerful city. She accepted his proposal, of course, her heart still pounding from the gelid fear that had risen in her breast when it had seemed that he was ending things. Michael stood up and opened his arms, enfolding her and shielding her from the wind.  
  
And also, apparently, from the sight of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.  
  
Michael had handsomely bribed about ten people who worked in the building, so that he could escort Paige to the top at such an early hour. Consequently, they were alone, far above the sirens and the traffic, in a silence borne of being far from Earth. Although, of course, it had not felt any different for them than any other point in their lives- quiet was something they were more than accustomed to. And really, neither Paige nor Michael heard the plane thundering low over the city, or heard the epic crash as it slammed through the World Trade Center. They didn't hear the screaming, they didn't hear the sirens, they didn't hear the mangled cries that escaped from their own mouths.  
  
Both of them were deaf.  
  
But just as the newly blind discover their other senses become heightened, the deaf learn to see what they cannot hear. They see the tones in people's voices, the sound of a dog's bark in the shape of its mouth and others' reactions, the piercing wail of a baby's cry. . . they see it, and feel it, for want of a sense they've never experienced. The deaf learn to feel what others merely hear.  
  
Perhaps that is why the spark of life that had just begun inside of Paige felt the horror of the day, in a manner no normal embryo should.  
  
Paige and Michael did marry, though a malevolent shadow had fallen across their lives. A darkness entered Paige on September 11, 2001; a darkness borne of a hatred so vast that it could consume everything in its path and suck it into nothingness. It haunted her dreams, her every step, her every breath. . . every moment of her life. She retreated from her friends, dropped out of school, and took a menial job as a typist. Michael alone remained with her, the only one who could even begin to understand what had changed in the girl everyone loved so dearly. Even she didn't fully understand.  
  
On October 1, 2001, Paige went into labor. Michael drove her to the hospital, somehow aware of the agonized screams being ripped from the throat of the woman stretched out on the backseat. At the hospital, the doctors frantically gave her every pain medication they could think of; although the woman could not hear her own preternatural cries, everyone else in the entire hospital could. Finally, she fell silent, and the contractions began to come faster. She writhed on the birthing bed, her arms flailing so violently that the orderlies were forced to strap her wrists to the metal bars at her sides, to prevent further injuries to herself and the doctors.  
  
But the baby was slowly, steadily making her first appearance in the world. First the head, covered with thick reddish-blonde hair, then the tiny shoulders, now down to her waist. . .  
  
Paige seized, every nerve in her body burning in a desperate agony that was almost inhuman in its scope. Michael, forced to wait in a small lounge down the hall, straightened and turned his head unerringly towards his wife hundreds of feet away through the warren of halls in the hospital. Paige, in her unspeakable torment, crushed her own wrist in her desperate attempts to be free of the straps, and she was successful; her right arm broke through the restraint. Desperately, she began signing to the doctors, struggling to tell them something of colossal importance, but they could not understand her.  
  
And then, it was just too much.  
  
Every muscle in her body contracted violently, including the PC muscles in the wall of her vagina. In her agony, her body crushed her half- born child's spine at the base, generating an appalling crack that made two of three doctors stumble and nearly faint. That was one noise Paige never felt, because almost all life had fled her at that point.  
  
The baby, her legs dangling awkwardly, was pulled from Paige's body, her muscles now eerily lax. With her very last awareness, Paige's eyes fluttered open to meet her daughter's.  
  
And she heard something.  
  
Stunned, her mind reeling in the half-darkness of near death, she realized that her daughter, her infant daughter, was not making the sounds called screaming. She was speaking, straight to Paige's mind, in the voice of an adult. But Paige had never heard before, and could not understand what was being said. . . at first. Yet, a millisecond after her heart stopped, but seconds before brain death, Paige somehow understood.  
  
You died to save me, Mother, and I know it, though many never will. Know that this sacrifice will not be forgotten. . . and your death will be avenged. I swear it. 


End file.
